| The National – Fireproof Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Having just ended a 3+ year relationship with a heroin addict, my interpretation is likely skewed, but this song sounds like that person to me.. Always secretive, and manipulative in a way that makes you wish you were less open with them. How'd you get so far? Either far gone, or how have you lasted this long? Needle in the hay seems like an Elliot smith reference.. The water at the door is the constant threat of the lifestyle.. A million miles away is how they are most of the time. To me, the song sounds like a person trying to deal with another's addiction. "Wish I was that way" isn't to wish for the addiction, but to wish for their detachment because it's a lot easier than caring for/carrying them. |
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| KISS – Beth Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I hate Kiss and this song is no exception. It has a pretty melody, but that's it. Basically says the band's more important to him than his relationship. Sorry Beth, you're just gonna have to sit home alone for another few hours.. no... wait... make that all night. |
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| Communist Daughter – Speed of Sound Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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to me its a simple song about growing up and getting sick of the "scene." reminds me of going out all the time to shows... getting wrapped up in a local music scene.. bars, clubs, etc. always seeing the same faces and eventually feeling like you're stuck in a cycle of doing the same things in the same places with the same people. when you're younger, its all fresh and new and exciting.. you spend a lot of time finding your place in it all, but with time, it becomes monotonous and you want to find something more. maybe like a hipster growing up :-) never got fully into this band, but i love this song. |
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| Ani DiFranco – Done Wrong Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I completely agree. for me, it mirrors the cycle of emotional abuse in a relationship with a heroin/opiate addict. "i guess that makes me the jerk with the heartache" - feeling stupid for feeling heartbroken, when you know the addict isn't even capable of feeling that way in return.. years of addiction basically destroy the addict's ability to care for anyone or anything outside of his need to score. "how could you do nothing And say, I'm doing my best" not only can he not really contribute emotionally, but to be a bit overly literal, it also sounds like the constant loss of/search for a job that never quite pans out. "How could you take almost everything And then come back for the rest" describes being used by someone else. financially, emotionally, however.. There's not an end to how much he'll take in the name of self preservation. "How could you beg me to stay Reach out your hands and plead And then pack up your eyes and run away As soon as I agreed" this is the one that really screamed addict to me and made me think about the song in this way. having been in an emotionally abusive and draining on again off again merry go round for over a year.. dramatic breakups, passionate reconciliations.. more than once, he's called me crying, begging, pleading, apologizing after we've blown up and called it quits.. "he knows he's been horrible and he really wants to change. please help him, don't abandon him, etc." Like an idiot, i've taken him back over and over again, only to arrive right back to the break up point in a week or a month... the passionate pleas are gone and its like a switch is flipped.. when he's using, he's truly dead in his eyes and seems gone. at that point, there's no affection, nothing at all. he wants me to either enable him or get the F out of his way. "I've been like one of those zombies In Vegas Pouring quarters into a slot And now I'm tired And I am broke And I feel stupid and I feel used And I'm at the end of my little rope And I am swinging back and forth About you" doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result (insanity, right?). In my case, pretty literally, since you don't live with or love an addict without it draining you financially to some point... you see it happening, recognize manipulation, but find yourself falling for it anyway in the name of supposed love.. swinging back and forth is the cycle of breaking up and coming back together.. or the process of seeing the reality and knowing you should end it v hanging on to the fantasy of what you want it to be, what it could be, or what is has been in fleeting glimpses. ending with the questions repeated feels like the cycle starting all over again. this song is beautiful and very sad to me. |
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| Ani DiFranco – Icarus Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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love this song.. it sounds more like church than church to me.. sort of buddhist as well.. some of the lyrics are wrong above: "dreams like this roll in like a cold front thunder is thundering and lightening in tow and your tiny little life gets even smaller as you heed the heaven's mighty show and i don't mean heaven like god-like the animal I am knows very well that nature is our teacher and our mother and god is just another story that we tell" |
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| Dinosaur Jr. – Quicksand Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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not just a bowie cover, sort of a bowie homage. i was listening to hunky dory today and realized the song is an adaptation of quicksand, but the intro is taken from the song "andy warhol" on the same album. i'll be darned. |
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| Bright Eyes – Middleman Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I think this song is about his musical progression and the influences that have affected him.. The music has a very folk/bluegrass sound.. “I traveled though the atmosphere as a wall of feedback climbed The pegs were gold, the band was old, they played in half time…” Sounds to me like a description of listening to an old bluegrass band play. Halftime, being their style/tempo (http://www.thehalftimestringband.com/music.html the first track, “pray” embodies the sort of sound I hear in this track) I think the collaboration with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings on this album further supports that idea, not to mention the steel guitar, mandolin, etc. that create the sound. “…Now every dream gets whittled down just like every fool gets wise You will never reap of any seed deprived of sunlight” the next line seems to reinforce the importance of exposing oneself to all sorts of ideas, sounds, influences, etc. the “sunlight” an artist needs to grow. Dreams getting whittled down and fools getting wise both seem to describe how new knowledge can change you in ways you might not have expected. “So I keep my footlights shining bright just like I keep my exits wide Because I never know when it's time to go, it's too crowded now inside The dead can hide beneath the ground and the birds can always fly But the rest of us do what we must in constant compromise” In the next verse, he seems to describe himself (or his range of influence maybe?) as a stage (bright footlights, exits wide) I take “it’s too crowded now, inside” to mean there are so many different influences at play in his music.. that its not really possible to go through and label each, they just happen. That’s how art is.. it’s the compromise, and what makes him the middleman. I’m sure there’s more to it, but after a few listens, this is how I’ve interpreted the song. Perhaps a reaction to the gazillion “today’s Bob Dylan” labels that have been tossed his way? |
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| Arcade Fire – Windowsill Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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this song seems like a counterpart to (Antichrist Television Blues), which immediately preceeds in on the album. both start out similarly. In ATB, a peppy, hyper "Don't want to work in a building downtown" and in windowsill, a slowed down, almost reticent "I don't want to hear the noises on TV". if ATB can be interpreted as from the point of view of joe simpson, then this could be seen in part as jessica's response.. "MTV what have you done to me? Save my soul, set me free Set me free, what have you done to me? I can't breathe, I can't see" definitely seems like a reaction to intense media scrutiny.. in the broader sense though, ATB seems to describe the lazy, exploitative nature of the entertainment industry right now, while windowsill describes being fed up with it... be it from the point of view of a media darling, or any given person who's just sick of the flood of media distortion. Hence “I don’t want to see it at my windowsill” (x 21) also, being from New Orleans, the windowsill line strikes me as an allusion to the flooding after Katrina… “I don't want to fight in the holy war… …I don't want to live in America no more” Seems to support this… help was slow to come to the gulf coast in large part because national guard troops from those areas were mostly deployed to the “holy war” going on right now. Admittedly, the last part of my interpretation might be a little skewed by my own experience, but regardless, the song seems to equate the media coverage of national news, entertainment, and even war as all falling into the same saturated, overblown category that is oh so distinctly American. |
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| Elliott Smith – 2:45 AM Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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i haven't seen it this way anywhere, and i can hear it both ways, but i've always thought in the last lines: "i'm walking out on center circle the both of you can just fade to black i'm walking out on center circle been pushed away and i'll never go back" he was saying 'this inner circle' and not 'center circle'... whoever it is who's betrayed him, it's a person or people who are very close to him, his "inner circle," and he's giving up on the relationship. |
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| Wolf Parade – I'll Believe in Anything Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I think archemist has a good notion about the song being sung from the point of view of one heroin addict to another, although I think the other addict may be sick or dying (maybe HIV or AIDS transmitted through needles?) This could explain the shift in the last verse. “If I could take the fire out from the wire I'd take you where nobody knows you And nobody gives a damn… …About your blood your bones your voice and ghost because nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn either way” He goes from wanting to share a life with her, needing her blood, bones, voice, ghost, to instead making that the reason he’d like to take her away.. where no one knows, and therefore cares about the illness (her blood and bones) and the stigma it has. It’s always sort of bothered me at the end, that it seems like such an earnest love song, but all of the sudden he wants to whisk his love object off to somewhere no one gives a shit about her. Seems to make a little more sense this way, and enforce the sentiment of the rest. Just a thought… Regardless, this is my favorite on the album. |
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